Taking Embedix for a spin

To develop a sense of how practical it would be to configure systems using Embedix, I decided to build a system for each of the single-board computers in my Embedded Linux Toolkit Test Lab (described in the introduction to this series), and (at a minimum) get the system booted… and the Ethernet interface running.

Selecting the appropriate driver in Target Wizard (described as “DM9102 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter support”), then rebuilding and deploying results in a properly running network interface on the VNS-786L. Similarly, for the Ampro Little Board/P5x the “AMD PCnet32 PCI” kernel option in Embedix works just fine. Finally, for the WinSystems EBC-TXPlus I chose the EtherExpressPro/100 driver in Target Wizard and this interface ran with no complaint.

Overall assessment

With the Embedix SDK, Lineo has a well designed product likely to be attractive to many embedded system designers. Open source purists may object to the “license soup” under which it is released, but users will find it easy to use for the almost all embedded systems, allowing them to focus on their application needs. At the same time, their transparent configuration file formats and exceptional documentation make it easy enough for users to understand and modify the environment when the need arises. The balance Lineo has struck between utilizing standard Linux processes and adding proprietary tools to ease development will likely meet the needs of a large class of embedded Linux system developers.

— The end —

---

Story navigation . . .

• Part 1: First impressions
  
• Part 2: Managing a project
  
• Part 3: Thoughts on the kernel configuration process
  
• Part 4: Other Embedix components and features
  
• Part 5: Lineo's real-time Linux option
  
• Part 6: Taking Embedix for a spin

Be sure to read all the articles in this series . . .

• A developer's review of the leading Embedded Linux toolkits
  
• A developer's review of Lineo's Embedix SDK
  
• A developer's review of MontaVista's Hard Hat Linux SDK
  
• A developer's review of Red Hat's Embedded Linux Developer Suite
  
• A developer's review of LynuxWorks' BlueCat Linux SDK
  
• A developer's review of REDSonic's RED-Builder Embedded Linux toolkit

---

About the author: Jerry Epplin has written embedded software for the past fifteen years, primarily for medical devices. He can be reached at [email protected]

---

---

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.